Noor Al-Sibai

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Montana Public Schools Caught Blocking LGBT Advocacy Websites — While Allowing Anti-gay Sites

Public high school students in Montana have been blocked from accessing pro-LGBTQ websites — but not from anti-gay sites.

CounterPunch reported Friday that students in Billings, Montana have been blocked from pro-LGBTQ sites since January 14.

An email sent to school staff from Brandon Newpher, the executive director of technology for Billings Public Schools, said the school system is blocking content “to improve network security and help protect students and staff.”

A list of “blocked keywords and subjects” was leaked to CounterPunch but did not include the terms “gay,” “homosexuality,” or “LGBT/Q.” It did, however, show that “adult content” and “dating sites” were blocked for both students and staff.

The report noted that Human Rights Watch and GLAAD, two LGBTQ advocacy websites, are currently blocked for students in Billings.

CounterPunch noted that the American Civil Liberties Union declared that “blocking all LGBT content violates students’ First Amendment rights to free speech.”

“They also violate the Equal Access Act, which requires equal access to school resources for all extracurricular clubs,” the ACLU noted, “including gay-straight alliances and LGBT support groups.”

According to the school system, such sites are blocked to “comply with filtering requirements as described by Children’s Internet Protection Act.”

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Alaska Airlines Forced a Same-sex Couple to Switch Seats So a Straight Couple Could Sit Together in First Class

Over the weekend, Alaska Airlines allegedly forced a prominent gay businessman and his partner to switch seats so a straight couple could sit together in the seats they were occupying in the plane’s “premium” section.

Los Angeles businessman David Cooley was flying from New York back to LA when he and his partner, who had already been seated in their assigned premium seats “for a while,” were approached by a flight attendant.

“My companion was asked to move from his premium seat to coach, so a couple could sit together,” Cooley wrote in a Facebook post about the incident. “I explained that we were a couple and wanted to sit together. He was given a choice to either give up the premium seat and move to coach or get off the plane.”

Cooley and his partner “could not bear the feeling of humiliation for an entire cross-country flight” so they left the plane.

“I cannot believe that an airline in this day and age would give a straight couple preferential treatment over a gay couple and go so far as to ask us to leave,” he wrote. “I have never been so discriminated against while traveling before.”

When contacted by GSN, Alaska Airlines said the businessman and his partner were “mistakenly assigned the same seats as another couple in Premium Class.”

“We reseated one of the guests from Premium Class in the Main Cabin,” the airline’s statement read.

In his posts on Twitter and Facebook, Cooley — owner of the popular West Hollywood club The Abbey — implored his followers to boycott Alaska Airlines and Virgin Airlines, the company it just purchased. He noted that they booked flights through Delta, who he called an “LGBT friendly airline” worthy of patronage.

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Disexual Russian Man Could Be Killed if He’s Deported — But an Oregon Judge Won’t Let Him Stay

Participants march during the Belgian Gay Pride parade in Brussels Belgium on May 20, 2017. Image by Alexandros Michailidis via Shutterstock.

After traveling through multiple countries to get to the United States and avoid persecution, a bisexual Russian man waited in immigration detainment for months — only to be denied asylum by an Oregon judge.

The Portland Mercury reported that after being threatened by police in the Russian North Caucasus region, near the border of the notoriously anti-gay Chechnya, Dmitri (a pseudonym to protect his identity) decided to flee to the US in spite of knowing neither English nor any people in the states.

“Most asylum seekers fly to the United States on a tourist visa and then, once they arrive, request asylum,” reporter Katie Herzog wrote. “But Dmitri had applied for a tourist visa four times before, and each time his application was rejected.”

Instead, Dmitri “took the long way,” flying from Moscow to France, Cuba and finally Tijuana, Mexico, where he surrendered himself to authorities who detained him. In the past, most asylum-seekers were granted a bond hearing every six months, but in February, Herzog noted, the Supreme Court reversed the decision that gave that entitlement. Asylum-seekers can now be held indefinitely while awaiting hearings, “even if they haven’t committed a crime.”

“The implications of this policy are playing out most visibly on the southern border” with Donald Trump’s family separation policy. In Dmitri’s case, however, it led to him being sent to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington — a place he’d never heard of prior to surrendering to agents at Tijuana.

Herzog noted that although only 37 percent of immigrants nationwide have attorneys due to their cases taking place in civil (rather than criminal) court, Dmitri got lucky and found a lawyer “through fellow detainees at the prison.” He spent five months at the Northwest Detention Center before his hearing, where Portland-based Judge Richard Zanfardino teleconferenced in to preside over his case.

In most cases, the report noted, queer and transgender Russians are able to get asylum in the US because judges “understand that being LGBTQ could get you murdered in Russia.” Zanfardino, however, did not agree with that general consensus and argued that it’s not illegal to engage in homosexual activity in Russia.

Russian law, the judge wrote in his decision, “does not criminalize an individual for being homosexual but instead criminalizes speech considered pro-LGBTI” — leaving out that it is illegal to be out of the closet in the country. Herzog wrote that Zanfardino also denied the claim because Dmitri “also denied the claim because Dmitri had secretly dated men in the past without suffering physical harm.”

Kimahli Powell, the director of the Rainbow Road organization that helps queer and trans people get to safety around the world, said Zanfardino is “is basically condemning [Dmitri] to violence” with the ruling.

The bisexual Russian’s lawyer plans to appeal the claim, a process that could take between six months to a year. When and if that appeal is denied (which is likely, Herzog wrote), the attorney will then take the case to federal court.

In the meantime, Dmitri will remain in a prison where he said he is very cold, playing cards and learning English.